A Tournament of Roses Parade Memory

Downey CA entry in Rose Parade 1976

This is the float that I designed as a last minute favor to the Downey Rose Float Committee for the 1976 entry into the Rose Parade. Downey Public Works built it and volunteers paste on all the flowers. Downey was home to Rockwell and it's space connections. So pioneers across the plains and to the stars was my idea drawn a week before the deadline to submit!

Friends and I spent the night before sleeping in chairs and cots to protect people from "taking souvenirs" or flowers off of it. Having spent a whole week cutting various flowers into their parts, gluing flower parts and seeds onto the surface and putting whole roses into tubes with water in them,  then sticking those into the float, we didn't want all that ruined by curious people walking the pre-parade route parking.

No parade in today in 2021. Next year perhaps.